How The Two Major Parties Helped Destroy Democracy

How The Two Major Parties Helped Destroy Democracy2016-02-142016-02-14https://popularresistance-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2017/12/popres-shorter.pngPopularResistance.Orghttps://popularresistance-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2016/02/1dem-150x100.jpg200px200px

Above photo: A voter casts a ballot at a polling station at David R. Cawley Middle School in Hooksett, New Hampshire, February 9, 2016. When all ideas must first be filtered through the umbrella of the Democrat-Republican cartel, it dictates the pedigree of ideas both old and new – therefore severely limiting any competition from threatening its hegemony. (Photo: Hilary Swift / The New York Times)

Cartel: An association of manufacturers or suppliers with the purpose of maintaining prices at a high level and restricting competition.

United States – A little over two decades ago, on December 2, 1993, the principle engineer of Colombia’s infamous cocaine empire, Pablo Escobar, was killed while fleeing police on the barrio rooftops of his hometown, Medellin. Before he died he had amassed an organization of state-like power, challenging, in fact, the government of Columbia itself over the question of its extradition policies-and winning. Dubbed the Medellin drug cartel, his international cocaine operation grew to prominence functioning similarly to the corporations which dominate today’s global economy. Escobar knew, by controlling every possible link in the drug chain from production to retail, he could corral suppliers under a single umbrella, dictate the price of his product, and severely limit any would-be competitors from challenging his power.

Escobar was not alone in learning from the strategies of corporate giants. If anything he was late. Few organizations have pervasively and durably monopolized a market as well as America’s Republican and Democratic parties. The two dominant machines steering the U.S. electorate have consistently diminished the potential for a freer America. That’s because the reality is, rather than arch rivals, liberals and conservatives are two factions of the same team. Both are capitalist. Both are imperialist. Both are white supremacist surrogates. And both are controlled by a plutocratic elite who have discovered what Escobar learned in his early twenties, that competition is best neutralized by eliminating all possible outliers. We merely perceive the two parties as markedly different because of the degree to which the spectrum of possibilities has been narrowed.

American Cartel

Politics, at its barest, is a market characterized by power-and the struggle for how power will be distributed. As CrimethInc illustrated some time ago, in this market ideas function similar to currency. Delineated by ideas which can build capital enough for the acquisition of more power, and those which might unbind power, political parties are tethered to the same basic operating principles of any capitalist enterprise. They must solidify market share in the realm of ideas and grow, wherever and whenever possible, or go bankrupt. Incubated within this constant power play, self-preservation becomes the party’s central priority; and it does not matter if the ideas which accomplish this outcome are beneficial to the electorate or detrimental, so long as it achieves the imperative to survive.

Political organizations which maintain growth long enough to survive often do so by normalizing their ideological framework. When they have obtained a disproportionate amount of influence over their immediate surroundings, they can metastasize into monopolies and control large swaths of the idea-economy. New ideas about how society ought to function can enter the market to contest old ideas, but usually encapsulated within reforms incapable of unseating the dominant paradigm. Characteristic of any capitalist system, once market monopolies are established “power tends to flow upward to the top of a hierarchy, from which the masters, the ones qualified to employ it, decide matters for everyone else.”

Remember the age-old question, what do all those with power want? More power. As such, two monopolies have dominated American politics for over 150 years-the Democratic Party, founded in 1828, and the Republican Party, founded in 1854. Together, they form a political cartel, or an association of political parties with the purpose of maintaining concentrated power and restricting or repressing competition. Throughout the past century its loosely managed agreements, often wholly unofficial, but embedded deep within its standard operation, have been the quasi-coordinated production, distribution, and enforcement of a set of normalized choices which reflect only the range of needs of private corporate power.

Essentially, to solidify and gain greater control, the two parties staked out a set of positions within a predetermined and standardized framework which express the basic ideas of the status quo. This way any “new” solutions about what might be possible tend toward ideas which pose no serious danger to the framework itself, which produce reforms only capable of gutting radical resistance while leaving the underlying problems intact. Any outliers are assimilated or positioned to enhance the strength of current institutions. In other words, all ideas must first be filtered through the umbrella of the Democrat-Republican cartel, which dictates the pedigree of ideas both old and new, and therefore severely limiting any competition from threatening its hegemony.

American Sicarios

Central to the project of any cartel is control. And within most drug cartels there is an armed group responsible for carrying out violence in an effort to maintain it. In Colombia they were called sicarios. Though the violence is systematically different, American sicarios are most accurately found in state institutions like the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Such an observation should not be seen as hyperbole. Even the most marginally informed American should know their government frequently has been involved in shameful acts of violence, whether it was the assassination, framing, and political neutralization of black, brown, indigenous, and left-radical movements and their leaders, or organized coups in the Middle East,Africa, and Central or South America.

Without enforcers America’s political cartel simply could not exist. As I wrote in Gangs Of The State: Police And The Hierarchy Of Violence, our society operates on a clearly defined, yet often unarticulated, hierarchy of violence; and the function of politicians and police agencies is to normalize and enforce that violence. As an institution, these agencies act as state-sanctioned gangs, or, in this instance, the sicarios of America’s political ideology, charged with the task of upholding the violent, racist hierarchy of white supremacist capitalism. Wherever and whenever possible, they are tasked with solidifying a monopoly of power where all violence from/by those higher on the hierarchy upon those lower can be normalized into business as usual. Any deviation from the status quo, any resistance whatsoever, is met with brutal repression.

For those familiar with United States history, the record of repression against anti-capitalist groups has been a source of considerable alliance between Democrats and Republicans. In A People’s History of the United States, recounting America’s anti-leftist atmosphere after Russia’s Bolshevik Revolution, Howard Zinn wrote:

“In early September 1917, Department of Justice agents made simultaneous raids on forty-eight IWW [International Workers of the World] meetings across the country, seizing correspondence and literature that would become courtroom evidence. Later that month, 165 IWW leaders were arrested for conspiracy to hinder the draft, encourage desertion, and intimidate others in connection with labor disputes. One hundred and one went on trial [en masse] in April 1918; it lasted five months, the longest criminal trial in American history up to that time… [T]he jury found them all guilty. The judge sentenced [IWW president William “Big Bill”] Haywood and fourteen others to twenty years in prison; thirty-three were given ten years, the rest shorter sentences. They were fined a total of $2,500,000. The IWW was shattered.”

Commonality between the United States’ two major political parties has been most visible when viewed through its historically imperialist and anti-communist foreign policy. Beginning with the expansion of Soviet influence, the relationship is best described by a popularized euphemism of the Cold War Era: Partisanship ends at the water’s edge, meaning, if the two factions of the cartel could ever totally agree, it must be on the dismembering of communism everywhere. As the growth of nationalist and anti-colonialist movements abroad strengthened in concert with labor movements in America, a fierce need for bipartisan crackdown to preserve the dominant regime emerged. Zinn once again lends clarity:

“The United States was trying, in the postwar decade [of World War II], to create a national consensus-excluding the radicals, who could not support a foreign policy aimed at suppressing revolution-of conservatives and liberals, Republicans and Democrats, around the policies of the Cold War and anti-Communism. Such a coalition could best be created by a liberal Democratic President, whose aggressive policy abroad would be supported by conservatives… [I]f the anti-Communist mood became strong enough, liberals could support repressive moves at home which in ordinary times would be seen as violating the tradition of liberal tolerance.”

Repressive moves were exactly what happened. Imperialist consensus not only generated cohesion on issues of foreign policy, it refined a coordinated relationship of narrowed domestic power between Democrats and Republicans, providing the groundwork to enact an increasingly clandestine police-state. Repression of previous magnitude would continue against not only anti-capitalists, but against movements for self-determination throughout the ’60s and ’70s among black people, Puerto Ricans, Chicanos, and indigenous populations, most notably through the FBI’s COINTELPRO operations. The tactics for gutting competing political currents pioneered by police agencies then became standard operating procedure, evolved into pervasive surveillance apparatuses, and have been deployed in both recent uprisings against Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter protesters.

American Crime Lords

If there is a position within the cartel’s classic hierarchy embodied by most liberal and conservative politicians, it would not be the rank of crime lord, but rather that of lieutenant, the second highest position. Lieutenants are responsible for supervising the sicarios within their own territories-in our case, their respective states. They are allowed discretion to carry-out the day-to-day operations of the cartel, to ensure its smooth operation. Crucial duties include voting on legislation filtered through existing idea-monopolies, which remain firmly rooted within the sanctioned political spectrum, and policing the spectrum’s established borders by criminalizing outliers, especially ones that cannot be assimilated and must be repositioned to reinforce the existing framework. If they perform well enough, they become the focus of investigative inquiry and obscure the higher authority they serve.

The rank of real crime boss goes to richest of the rich. The multi-billionaires of America who-in recent years-have given up to 42 percent of all election contributions, and captured the state in the process. Brothers Charles and David Koch, owners of Koch Industries, the second largest privately owned company in the United States, are known for funding the Republican political machine, giving over one hundred million dollars to far-right causes. But the Kochs are no more alone in their policy purchasing than Republicans are in begging the super wealthy for campaign funds. Democrats have increasingly relied on it too. Money awarded to Democrats from corporate PACs now far outstrips what used to come from labor unions and trial lawyers. For instance, corporate PACs donated $164.3 million to Republicans during the 2010 election season and $164.3 million to Democrats also. Unions gave $59-$79 million.

Owning a cartel may not seem cheap, but it pays dividends. It accomplishes this not only through generating enormously disproportionate wealth, or even through buying elections, but by imposing upon the impoverished a set of values which ensure their continued exploitation. Karl Marx himself pointed this out, explaining that “the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force.” For the poor American voter this means individuals are made to develop in such a fashion that their development fosters the strength of the capitalist state. At their core, working class people are constantly being sold and resold their own disempowerment, until finally we sell it to ourselves-over and over again. It is a sinister, but brilliant, stroke of genius-what better way to destroy the possibility of expropriation than to make disparity gold.

Michel Foucault described this process of perpetually re-inscribing within ourselves, and each other, the relation we have to power as the effect of unspoken warfare, a war where we build within our social institutions, and our very bodies, an ultimate disequilibrium. We self-police so thoroughly that when power’s effects upon us begin self-reproducing “there is no need for arms, physical violence, [or] material constraints,” just an inspecting gaze, “which each individual under its weight will end by interiorisation to the point that he is his own overseer, each individual thus exercising this surveillance over, and against, himself.” In short, we become our own worst enemies. The rules and values of the rich become the self-inflicted rules and values of the poor. But they never benefit us. And we quit asking why.

American Plutocracy

Democracy describes today’s America by only the most facile standards. It has never really described America anyway. Plutocracy is the accurate word. And our plutocratic overlords keep us in a hamster-wheel choosing which lieutenant we will take orders from next for practical reasons. It gives them, and the political parties they own, a sort of object permanence. We understand the prescriptions of those in power even when we cannot observe them directly; because we have been inundated by their surrogates and transformed into a passive body meant only to ratify our subjugation. Imagine waking up in a prison cell with the choice to continue sleeping on an unpadded iron bench or a concrete floor. No matter what “decision” you make, neither can destroy the cage. This is the reality of our political climate, a series of non-decisions masquerading as choice.

Ultimately, the emergence of plutocracy has not been the fault of the working class. Even though we have internalized many of the mechanisms used to exploit us, we constantly have been outpaced, outgunned, and outright demoralized. And in our attempts at democracy we have fundamentally failed to understand that political freedom cannot exist in the absence of economic freedom. They are inextricably linked, like a tree to its roots. Now that many Americans are beginning to see how capitalism has been the physical incarnation of inequality, we must move forward in this moment and reconcile with another unassailable truth: That capitalism’s relation to democracy will always be characterized by adversary, not coexistence. In such an environment, America’s major political parties remain henchmen to a perverse and morally bankrupt distribution of power.

All true. Although I would argue that this has grown bigger than the U.S. which the global billionaires now essentially treat as another third world country except that our military is one their most powerful tools, outdone only by corporate mass media.
But yes, the Republican Party is the shameless advocate for billionaire interests, while the Democratic Party is designed to absorb and deflect the anger of the People. And even Bernie Sanders, who I’d love to believe in, is likely to be part of that process, whether or not he knows it.
That said, just as our movements are continually infiltrated and diverted by their agents, I believe the current schisms in the parties, personified by Bernie (and Trump) are an opportunity for us to expand the evolution we need to overthrow the global corporate revolution.
Young people who have grown up on the internet are used to engaging in people’s ideas before they engage in their identities. They understand in their bones that gender, race, ethnicity, etc. are not indicators of integrity or intelligence. This scares the plutocracy because Divide and Conquer is their most effect strategy.
Meanwhile Sanders has struck a chord. He has leapt to the front of the movement to create true democracy and many believe that he is our champion. It is easy to dismiss this as another ploy by the plutocracy as it may well be, but I suggest that this phenomena can be used to build the movement, while we get people to understand that the movement is Bigger than Bernie (oooh nice slogan) and remind them than once the election is over, no matter who is elected, nothing will happen if the movement does not continue to grow and force change from the outside. This is what I tell people that think Clinton will be effective because of her “experience” but I am not sure how many Bernie people actually understand that.
Please do not miss this opportunity for us to co op this presidential race that is taking place at a most historical moment in history (you have to at least give credit to Sanders for recognizing it).
Viva La Evolution! It’s Bigger than Bernie!

AlanMacDonald

Exactly jemcgloin, it “has grown bigger than the U.S.” as you say, and the U.S. has merely been ‘captured’ and “Occupied” as the nominal HQ, metropole, merely ‘posing’ as the U.S. while using/abusing the “U.S. states’ apparatus” of both ‘soft and hard’ super-powers to provide media, military, and extra-legal support for the Disguised Global Capitalist Empire’s looting for the private wealth accumulation by global elites of the Empire, as accurately diagnosed by Professor Robinson:

“The U.S. state is a key point of condensation for pressures from dominant groups around the world to resolve problems of global capitalism and to secure the legitimacy of the system overall. In this regard, “U.S.” imperialism refers to the use by transnational elites of the U.S. state apparatus to continue to attempt to expand, defend, and stabilize the global capitalist system. We are witness less to a “U.S.” imperialism per se than to a global capitalist imperialism. We face an empire of global capital, headquartered, for evident historical reasons, in Washington.”

Bernie and his “Political Revolution” over the neoliberal-con ‘D’ Vichy party (the Empire captured old Democratic Party) is the best route to success for our essential, but non-violent, Second American Revolution against Empire again!

Bernie Sanders will have ‘absolutely no problem’ winning the “Black vote’, the Afro-American vote, and the entire Black Community for the following reasons:

The Black Community is BY FAR the most ‘politically
conscious’ in America — primarily because blacks are the most economically oppressed, tyrannized, shot at, and imprisoned in America — so they are certainly not going to vote for the wife of a past president who did exactly NOTHING for them, and a candidate Killary who comes across as; angry, severe, un-empathetic, and who
actually bragged of her leading the hunting party and killing the Black elected president of an African country, “We came, we saw, he died”, after he had been sufficiently scared to death of the U.S. led global Empire which he had stopped confronting.

While the wishful thinking, but totally ineffective real
Black president, Obama, ‘ONLY says’ that some days he wishes he could just “go Bulworth”, like a radical “Socialist”
and rapping white California Senator Bulworth did in his love for Halle Berry in South LA (in the most radical film that Americans were ever allowed to even see), Bernie Sanders despite being an un-sexy older Jewish life long supporter of greater civil rights for the most oppressed among us, has actually had the guts to DO what Obama just says he dreams about!

But more importantly on ALL ISSUES — of which Killary is trying like hell to nail Bernie as a “one-issue’ guy — Bernie has to start laying out the ground work to trap this bitch in her own attempted effort to trap him as being only ONE ISSUE guy:

Bernie has to start to roll out the seminal and meta-issue (really a meta-cancer) that is the proximate cause of all the various little (but important) “identity issues”, and all the more dangerous, but still subordinate, ‘symptom problems’ (like expanding wars abroad, WS looting, domestic ‘spying’ and tyranny “at home”, et al.) —- which means that Bernie has to start focusing on EMPIRE, which is the deadly “kryptonite” that will instantly KILL Killary if she touches the meta-issue of EMPIRE, for the simple reason that she is the Empire’s preferred ‘Empress-in-waiting” of this whole DAMN Disguised Global Capitalist Empire which now has ‘captured’, controls, and nearly fully “Occupies” our former country as its nominal HQ, and merely ‘poses’ as America.

So, Bernie should start out his disclosure and confrontation
against Killary as being the DNC selected Empress by first floating the terminology in his “Political Revolution” campaign — which is currently a Revolution without an ‘object’ to be against, and thus an incomplete sentence with no object (just as the “Occupy” movement was a movement with no identified ‘object’) — and Bernie
needs to state using the terminology of leading a “Political
Revolution” against the ‘Financial Empire’ (which, after all, is basically what he has been focusing on already, but this seeds the word ‘Empire’ into the campaign language) —- which means that Bernie “OWNS” the term Empire, and can then use it to describe any and all problems that he is fighting the Revolution against. Or as Tom Cruise said “It completes me” — it really completes Bernie’s sentence structure and clarifies merely the First thing that his “Political Revolution” is against, it ‘completes the first meaning of the sentence “Political Revolution against what?”

In essence Bernie’s Revolution is now at the stage of fighting against only the “Financial-sector” of the much broader Disguised Global Capitalist Empire which contains at least six highly-integrated sectors to the Empire; financial, corporate, militarist, media/propaganda, extra-legal, racist, classist, and ultimately the facade of the ‘kept’-political sector of the Empire.

Dickard

Is there such a thing as a good Zionist? Sanders may be the best of bad bunch, but he still pays homage to Israel, so I believe all his talk of reform is lipservice. Reminiscent of Barry with all that talk of CHANGE. Also your vote counts for 0 in a presidential election, so this may as well be a discussion about sports.

jemcgloin

Yes that is why we need to infiltrate the Bernie movement, and turn all of these young people interested in politics into permanent activists, before the Democratic Party uses Bernie to Co-op the movement and diffuse it.

” …while the Democratic Party is designed to absorb and deflect the anger
of the People. And even Bernie Sanders, who I’d love to believe in, is
likely to be part of that process, whether he knows it or not.”

I agree, he is, indeed, part of this process …

“He has leapt to the front of the movement …”

Well, not on his own – he was given the enormous resources and platform the DP provides, precisely to deflect the rising tide of discontent back into the fold of the DP, where, as they say, progressive ideas go to die. He did not follow the example of his purported hero, Debs, who stayed outside the DP, to run in a 3rd party – a Socialist Party, and it has been argued that it was the threat made by those third parties to unseat the duopoly that “convinced” Roosevelt’s DP to institute the programs it did – he would not be co-opted by the DP. But Sanders has chosen to plight his troth to the DP – a fatal error, IMO, for anyone who says he wants a “political revolution”. And you think that either DP candidate will further a “revolution” once they are in office? They are Dems first and foremost, and any attempt to supplant the Party will not be “encouraged” by either – When Sanders said he would support the D nominee, no matter who, and said “I always have”, he signaled that quite clearly – when you sign the devils dance card, you can boogie a bit, but step on his toes and there will be hell to pay, or, as ivins would say, ya gotta dance with the one that brung ya. So, once again the DP appears to be successful in sucking the energy out of any real independent movement, and channeling it back into itself, where it will be diluted down to insignificance, again – just as with O and Clinton before him … Sanders looks better on paper, but turn a few more pages and the story ends …

But supporters could do one thing to test the sincerity of their candidate – pressure him to insist that 3rd parties be allowed in the debates – it he won’t do that, then it is rather clear, he is indeed functioning in the manner this piece describes – and the sign on his “Political Revolution” door says “Duopoly only, others need not apply” – i.e. acting as gatekeeper for this political cartel. What kind of “revolution” is that – a tempest in a teacup …

“Bernie and his “Political Revolution” over the neoliberal-con ‘D’ Vichy
party (the Empire captured old Democratic Party) is the best route to
success for our essential, but non-violent, Second American Revolution
against Empire again!”

No, it is another Dem detour taking us off the route to success …

Sanders doesn’t talk about “Empire” because he really doesn’t have a problem with it – he makes no connection between our FP and our dismal state of affairs at home – he has no beef with the MIC – he keeps voting to fund it … “Israel has a right to defend itself”, “drones have their uses” and the F-35 is just hunky-dory ….

The best route is the one outlined by Stein …. and you won’t see anything like it from Sanders …

The DP is already ” …use(Ing) Bernie to Co-op the movement and diffuse it.” That’s what he is there for ….

jemcgloin

Then fight back, that is what we are here for. Tell Bernie supporters, Bernie needs revolution on the outside to get things elected, and that whether or not he is elected, we will still need revolution on the outside.
If he loses, we don’t want them to just give up and go shopping. If he wins we week have to keep the pressure on anyway, no matter what he does.

Aquifer

Why bother – he has plighted his troth to the DP, will support the DP nominee, no matter who it is, as he “always has” …

Why support a guy you always have to “pressure” to do the right thing – instead of someone who is already on the right (as in correct) path …

Because, even if Jill Stein managed to get all the people that hate Trump and Clinton and pulled off the surprise win of the century, we would have to be putting pressure on the government, and probably even her, from the outside. The government has it’s own momentum, and can only truly be turned from the outside. It doesn’t matter so much who is inside, but what the rest of us do. Spread this message to the Bernie supporters, or they will go home after the election and think their job is done.

Aquifer

It matters a hell of a lot who is on the inside – TPTB know this, that is why they spend so much money on convincing us to vote D/P, why they find it necessary to arrest and handcuff a GP Pres nominee to a chair for hours to keep her out of a debate that she, as being on enough state ballots to get enough EC votes to win, is entitled to participate in …

jemcgloin

Yes having a true humanist like Jill Stein in the presidency would be a major coup. But she would be able to do nothing without immense pressure from the outside to move the levers of government which would resist every move she tried to make. That same immense pressure could be almost as effective even with Ted Cruz in the presidency, because the president is only one little (shiny) piece of the puzzle.

jemcgloin

I am not asking you to support Bernie Sanders. I am asking you to interact with and influence his supporters in a positive way so that they do not end up disillusioned and apolitical when Bernie fails them as he almost inevitably will. We need to help them get passed this to see that they are the (r)evolution, not him and that they have the power to make the world a better place if they stay active.

Aquifer

You forget the enormous shock effect that would ripple across the Congr sea if we actually elected a Green Pres – we would have finally done what we have been threatening to do for ages, but always chickened out from doing, and what they believed we never would do – actually throwing the bums out .. And they would know they could well be next if they didn’t “mend their ways” …

Scolos Narbarson

Thank you, Frank Castro. For writing this powerful and Truthful article. Its perspectives have contributed mightily to my increased understanding of the times I live in…the place I live in.

I pray that Many, Many Americans will come to realize the Truths in this well written piece.

I am encouraged with the Thought, that there will always (or so I Hope) be “Outliers” to monopolistic power systems. This seems to reflect the basic Truth in Physics (and Life) that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Though, at times (in social terms) it looks as thought the “equality” needs time to develop to a strength where its power causes the power center to become the “outlier”….with a resultant reduction in the will of and the forces for, Our Lesser Selves.

Scolos Narbarson

And what a lot of wonderful comments We have here…in support of this great article.

Scolos Narbarson

Well said, this.

jemcgloin

Yes it would be awesome to see their reaction, but they would quickly regroup and attach her viciously. Every thing she did would be called treason and they would start impeachment gains.
Look how they treat Obama, and he’s basically on their side.

Aquifer

Who cares what they call her – as far as treason – baloney, and if they “trumped” up an absurd impeachment charge – then you would see a real protest by all the folks who put her there – notice what happens when they attack Trump – his poll numbers go up …

As for attacking O – that is a family squabble inside the big dysfunctional family called the duopoly …

jemcgloin

You argued my point for me. It will have to be the people on the outside that give her the power to do her job. The insiders will all be throwing up roadblocks. You will need 10 million people constantly organizing to force congress, law enforcement, the military, and the courts to do their jobs.

jemcgloin

Also, if the election turns out to be Clinton/Trump, Stein has a slim but real chance of winning, since both Clinton and Trump are very unpopular.

Aquifer

That is under the assumption that the worst case scenarios – “treason” or impeachment charges – happen – sorry, but i think the suggestions of those scenarios are inadequate, to to say the least, reasons for not electing her …

jemcgloin

I didn’t say they were reasons to not elect her. (They would probably do something similar to Clinton or Sanders.) My point is that she will need help from the People on the outside.

Aquifer

I suspect that id enough folks get the “political courage: to defy the duopoly to elect her, they will, indeed “help” …

zmann

Yeah, we get all that as well as all the roadblocks the duopoly put up against third parties. However, third parties themselves lack organization, infrastructure, and good communications skills because they fail to start from the bottom up and half the supporters in each third party act like a bunch of rude and snotty jerks. For the last 15 years, focusing 90% of limited resources on presidential elections has proven to be foolhardy yet it still goes on. Furthermore, plenty of us have politely asked third party supporters to start winning at the local levels and build up from there yet they blow up and foam alienating potential support and leaving most of us with sour notes in our mouths about them. Worse, some of them lie and deny that their third parties have been making “progress” with nothing to show for it. The good supporters know all this and are trying to correct the problem so my sympathy with them. The jerkwads otoh deserve no respect or sympathy especially since they’re the ones responsible for keeping third parties dead before they can accuse us of voting D or R.

Daily movement news and resources.

Popular Resistance provides a daily stream of resistance news from across the United States and around the world. We also organize campaigns and participate in coalitions on a broad range of issues. We do not use advertising or underwriting to support our work. Instead, we rely on you. Please consider making a tax deductible donation if you find our website of value.